Monthly Archives: July 2020

Cooking With Kids: Dole Whip Popsicles

Buddy and I have been on a Disney kick lately. So far this summer we have done a virtual Disney World twice, built Disney parade floats, and made Mickey Pretzels. And a couple of weeks ago, we tried to make another Disney inspired food: Dole Whip Popsicles.

*Disclaimer – This post contains affiliate links for your convenience. As an Amazon associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.*

The recipe we used was originally made by Today’s Creative Life. To make Dole Whip popsicles, you need an 8 ounce container of Cool Whip, a 20 ounce can of crushed pineapple, lime juice, and 2 tablespoons of sugar.

It was very easy to make the popsicles. We combined the Cool Whip, crushed pineapple, lime juice, and sugar in the blender. Buddy had a great time pushing the buttons to turn the blender on and the different speed levels. You want to keep going until everything is well mixed and the mixture is smooth. Then you pour the mixture into popsicle molds and put in the freezer.

The original recipe said to freeze 2-4 hours, but we found that wasn’t nearly enough. We had better results when we let the popsicles freeze overnight. While they weren’t quite as good as the original Dole Whip, the taste was very similar and everyone in my family really enjoyed them. We will definitely be making these Dole Whip Popsicles again.

Cooking with Kids: Mickey Pretzels

This summer, Buddy and I have been doing What’s Cooking Wednesdays. He loves to cook, and it’s fun to have an excuse to find kitchen activities for him. Buddy has been asking to do Disney activities a lot recently, so I decided to make Mickey pretzels with him. It is a favorite snack of ours when we are in Disney World, and we were both excited to try it at home.

I got my inspiration from Smart School House’s blog. She uses a can of pretzel dough. I have seen other people use canned pizza dough for pretzels. I didn’t have either of those on hand, though, so I used the hot buttered pretzel recipe from King Arthur Flour. While it was a little more work to make our own dough, it wasn’t too difficult and they were amazingly delicious at the end.

We made the dough by combining 2 1/2 cups bread flour, 1 teaspoon salt, 1 teaspoon sugar, 2 1/4 teaspoons instant yeast, and 1 cup warm water in our mixer. Then we put in a greased bowl and covered with a light towel. The recipe calls for the dough to rise for 30 minutes, but we left it for an hour while Buddy napped.

When we returned to the dough, we split it into 6 equal sized pieces and rolled each into a long log. Our final pretzels were about the size of a dinner plate, so you could do more than 6 parts if you want smaller pretzels. After we made our logs we turned one into a circle to be a Mickey head. Then we split another one to be the two ears.

Next, we put 2 tablespoons of baking soda in 1 cup of boiling water and put it into a 13 x 9 baking pan. You are supposed to let the water cool a bit before dipping the pretzels. We dipped each pretzel into the mixture, and I used a spoon to bath the top part of the pretzel for 2 minutes. Then they went on the baking pan.

We baked the pretzels for 9 minutes at 475 degrees. They came out perfectly done. Then we brushed on 3 tablespoons of melted butter and put kosher salt on two. My husband dipped his in a cinnamon sugar mixture instead.

Our Mickey pretzels were even better than the ones in the parks! And the taste was very, very similar to the ones we get in the mall. We loved them and will be making more pretzels with this recipe in the future.

Disney STEM: Building Parade Floats

Buddy and I love Disney World, and we’ve been missing the parks lately. We were supposed to go in June, but that trip was canceled. Instead, we’ve been busy doing Disney activities at home. (Read about our virtual Disney World here.)

*Disclaimer – This post contains affiliate links for your convenience. As an Amazon associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.*

A friend of mine posted about doing her own Disney at home trip, and one of her activities was building parade floats out of Duplos. I knew Buddy would love it, so I wanted to try it.

Buddy’s been to Disney World twice, but we’ve never watched a parade there together. So before we built our floats, we watched a Disney parade on You Tube. (This is the one we watched, which is a parade from Disneyland.)

Once we had our inspiration it was time to build. Buddy and I searched through his Duplos to find as many wheels as we could. Then we went to build fun and inventive parade floats to carry different characters. We had to do some trial and error to find ways to make the float base large enough to carry the characters and still balance on the wheels. We also had the challenge of getting his Disney characters to stand while the float was moving since they weren’t Duplo blocks.

After we were done, Buddy and I put on some Disney music and made our floats go around his room and into the next room. We had such a blast doing this activity, that the following day Buddy wanted to make more floats before we did anything else. He loves the ones we made, and a week later there are still a few on his shelves that he can bear to put away. It was such a fun and easy activity, and I’m so glad we tried it.